For the Love of Poetry

I love poetry; both reading and writing it. It's taken a while (over thirty years) for me to finally awaken to it, but as the saying goes: "better late than never."

Poetry causes one to think. It enables one's thoughts to soar above the mundane. The lines of a poem are like windows to parts of the world we haven't seen, to emotions we haven't felt. Writing poetry takes a little while to get used to, but the right surroundings and timing may facilitate the pouring out of words from one's mind. My "poetry time" is the hour before sunset, and my "poetry place" is at my desk in my bedroom. 

It shouldn't come as a surprise that I like poetry. As a teenager I listened to R&B, hip hop, and rap. I would learn the rhymes to the songs and then sing them to the beats. I loved the rhymes that artists came up with. But I also loved how the rhymes depicted the life that many artists lived: the ghetto, poverty, struggle, prejudice, racism, rags to riches. Through their rhymes I could feel their struggles. And this is what good poetry does. A good poem doesn't have to rhyme - some of the best one's don't. A good poem has to take the reader into another place - the place where the writer is. The reader must feel what the writer feels; see what the writer sees; hear what the writer hears. Poetry is like an act of communion between the poet and the reader.

When I started practising Islam, at about the age of twenty one, I quickly became hooked on Islamic poetry, especially those compiled in qasidas and naats (Islamic songs). My favourite Islamic poem is The Burda, a poem compiled by the Egyptian Imam al-Busiri (1211–1294). It is sung throughout the Muslim world. Here it is in full: The Burda. In addition to listening to qasidas and naats I like reading Muslim poetry. Translations of classical Muslim poetry, including Rumi's Mathnawi, can be found here: Sacred Texts (Islam) (scroll down to 'Sufi texts').

These days I not only listen to qasidas and naats and read Muslim poetry, but also read Western poetry. A good place to find Western poetry is the site Poem Hunter. It has a 'top 500' list of poems, containing some of the most famous and well loved poems of the world. Here's the link: Poem Hunter Top 500 poems.  

It is reported that the Prophet Muhammad (sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam) said that "there is wisdom in poetry" (Bukhari, Muslim). For the Islamic view on poetry see this link: Did the Prophet or the Companions Partake in Poetry?

May we benefit from the lines of a poem. May we become wiser after reading poetry. 

***


Here's one of my favourites, by Rudyard Kipling: 

If
 
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
 
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools.
 
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
 
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

****

Here's another, by Omar Khayyam in his Rubaiyyaat:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.